Georgetown scholar Dr. Badar Khan Suri asks appeals court to reject government’s bid to re-detain him

RICHMOND, Va. – Dr. Badar Khan Suri’s legal team on Friday urged the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the lower court’s rulings that ordered his release on bail.

Dr. Suri is a postdoctoral scholar from India at Georgetown University’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding focused on peace and conflict resolution. He is married to a Palestinian-American U.S. citizen and is the father of three young children, all of whom are U.S. citizens. On the basis of a determination by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Dr. Suri somehow poses a threat to U.S. foreign policy, the government canceled Dr. Suri's visa, arrested him outside his home, and then transferred him to five different ICE facilities across three states, before leaving him in a Texas detention center thousands of miles away from his wife and children for months. His time in detention left him scarred both physically and emotionally, and recently he had to get a tooth extracted due to lack of dental care while detained.

“My children need me, my wife needs me, my academic community and students need me, and my research requires my full focus. I humbly submit that I should not be punished for something I did not do, nor should I be made a tool for political gains—whether by the groups who initiated these attacks or by those who amplified the smear campaigns against me,” said Dr. Suri.

“Throughout my career, I have been a small but consistent voice for the inalienable rights of oppressed people facing occupation and inhumane practices. I have done so out of a sense of justice and humanity, and I intend to continue in that spirit. I firmly believe that there is nothing wrong in standing for human dignity and compassion.

“I place my faith in this honorable court, with the hope that my rights will not be suspended, that justice will prevail, and that I will remain free to fulfill my responsibilities to my family, my students, and my community.”

The Trump administration is now asking the court to permit it to redetain Dr. Suri because, it says, the district court had no jurisdiction to consider his case in the first place. This comes months after the district court in Virginia ruled that Dr. Suri’s habeas case alleging violations of his constitutional rights may remain in Virginia, and shortly thereafter, released him on bail.

“Dr. Badar Khan Suri should never have been detained,” said Noor Zafar, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “The government’s argument essentially boils down to the sweeping assertion that it can use immigration laws to silence speech it disagrees with and no federal district court has authority to review the constitutionality of its actions. This dangerous and unprecedented argument not only chills Dr. Suri’s and his family’s speech but that of other noncitizens who seek to speak up in support of Palestinian rights. We are asking the court of appeals to reject this frightening proposal.”

This is not the first case in which the Trump administration has made extreme arguments about federal court jurisdiction. A federal court already ruled against the Trump administration when it found that it can review former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil’s First Amendment claims challenging his arrest and detention. Another federal court ruled against the Trump administration when it ordered the release of Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi on bail back in June. And yet another federal court ruled against the Trump administration when it ordered Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk to be transferred back to Vermont from Louisiana and released on bail.

Dr. Suri is challenging his arrest and detention under the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and the Administrative Procedure Act. He is represented in his federal lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Virginia, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the HMA Law Firm, and the Immigrants and Non-Citizens Rights Clinic at the CUNY School of Law.